The Socialist Party Urges National Resistance to Trump's Efforts to Weaponize Elections

The Socialist Party's Ballot Access and Electoral Working Group urges Americans to recognize and resist the Trump administration's efforts to maintain power through illegal and immoral control and manipulation of our electoral systems.

Earlier this year, Trump-appointed members of the Supreme Court joined the other conservative members in a continued gutting of the Voting Rights Act, allowing Republican-controlled legislatures to immediately begin redistricting majority-minority Congressional districts.

Trump and his Congressional allies have been continually pushing to pass the SAVE Act in response to the non-existent threat of non-U.S. citizens casting illegal votes. Expert analyses have determined that fraud

committed by non-eligible voters is infinitesimal, happening in less than one-tenth of one percent of votes cast. Trump continues to develop another aspect of his racist myth that America is being "taken over" by

criminal immigrants – this time to seize control of election oversight from states, where the Constitution plainly states it belongs.

Trump's efforts to control elections and voter registration also target women and transgender people, who his administration believes are likely to vote against him. The SAVE Act and other proposed rules are believed to require identification standards that women who have changed their name through marriage and people who have changed the gender marker on their state-issued identification will have difficulties meeting. Some states have already revoked identification from trans people whose gender markers do not match their gender marker assigned at birth.

Trump has issued an executive order requiring the United States Postal Service to use a federally-controlled list of approved voters as it delivers absentee and mail-in ballots in upcoming state elections. He has stated that voting by mail is a source of widespread fraud and has moved to ban it generally, while voting by mail himself earlier this year in Florida's primary election. Although a federal lawsuit was

immediately filed against this blatantly unconstitutional executive order, Trump is clearly attempting to use whatever power he can to attempt to steer election results to his favor in the 2026 midterm elections.

Early in 2026 Trump offered to withdraw ICE agents occupying Minneapolis if Minnesota officials agreed to hand over state voting data to him. This was the latest in a series of efforts to coerce and strong-arm

state officials into handing state voter data to Trump for centralization in a federal voter database.

The Democratic Party has joined Trump and the Republican Party in their bipartisan efforts to promote mid-cycle redistricting in an attempt to maintain or regain majority representation in Congress. Texas, Missouri,

Indiana, North Carolina, and Florida Republicans have already taken steps to redraw Congressional maps ahead of the 2026 election. Several Democrat-controlled states such as California and Virginia have taken similar steps. Maryland's legislature met recently in a special session solely devoted to a new redistricting that would eliminate Maryland's sole Republican-controlled Congressional seat.

The Socialist Party platform supports a number of reforms to protect free and fair elections, including proportional representation, public funding of campaigns, elimination of the Electoral College, ranked choice voting, and independent, non-partisan redistricting commissions.

Statement drafted by the SPUSA Ballot Access and Electoral Working Group and passed by the National Executive Committee August 10, 2026